Saturday 14 October 2017

A Little Road Trip

Another month has gone by and I  simply have not found the time to sit at the computer, get my photos off my phone and camera and  catch up with the blog. I apologize  and I may have to do several in a short time to catch up again. I keep up with the Facebook page as I can do it on the fly, while we are traveling or in short bursts of a few minutes at a time, but this takes a lot longer.
After organizing our son to  care for our small farm in our absence we headed off in our little caravan again.
This time we were heading north to Queensland for our niece's wedding, but taking a  few days to make our way up there and catch up with some friends and family  who we hadn't seen for a while along the way.
First stop was Barraba to visit one of Brian's aunts who we had see but not visited for over 30 years.
We parked our van in the back yard and had a wonderful afternoon and night with Auntie Shirley.
We went out to a lovely old local pub for a great meal. It was  good catching up and reminiscing .
Next we moved onto Warialda and stayed a couple of nights  at an old friend's place.
Neville and Brian used to work together many years ago and Tracy and I spent many days  in each others company while the men were away working. We are god parents to one of their children.
We had a look around the area including a local nature reserve which was a truly beautiful spot.
We enjoyed a BBQ and visits to  some of Tracey's  family( which we also had met many years ago)  and also had a couple of meals out.
It was a long overdue catch up, and we have all determined to not wait so long again.
We had intended to surprise other friends at Warick but they alas were not home and we will endeavour to  meet up with them and a few others on another  excursion.
With our friends not home we decided to head straight up to Dayboro where the wedding that we  attending was to be near. We passed through some stunning countryside.

We arrived  and set up camp at the Dayboro Showground , where many  the other traveling family members were also going to stay with their caravans.
There was a day  on our  own  before the others arrived which was nice. We had a look around Dayboro which was a lovely touristy place with lots of nick nacks  and coffee shops, a great butchers and a scrumptious bakery all  of which we  purchased goodies from..
It was lovely to just have some down time to sit and relax .
The wedding was being held  at the Glengariff historic estate up at Mount Mee a very picturesque location not far out of Dayboro.
It was a beautiful wedding of two very sweet people.  Chloe and Mitch  truly were destined to be together,we had a wonderful afternoon and evening even taking part in some crazy photo booth sessions with all the Sister's In Law, which was fun.
The next day after the wedding we hooked on the caravan  along with a couple of other family members and headed to Brendale (a northern suburb of Brisbane and had a couple of nights  with Brian's brother (the father of the Bride).
On the second day, all us  Sisters In Law  decided to catch a train into Brisbane to wander along Southbank and grab some lunch at a nice spot that grabbed our fancy.
What a stunning, family friendly  great place to spend a lazy day, what a treasure you have there Brisbane.
We found a lovely  place to eat, upstairs  with a wonderful view .
I had lunch with three of the loveliest girls, our marriages and partnerships  have thrown us all together and we thoroughly  love hanging out together.

After lunch we decided to catch a river cat and do some sight seeing up the Brisbane River.
It was a lovely  afternoon with the girls.
 We are Left to Right : Kerry,Myra,Yvette and Myself.
Next morning up bright and early and we headed  inland to Yarramin  all together   to a property that Brian's brother had been given permission for us to camp on for the night.

It was a beautiful campsite, next to a lake with the whole place to ourselves.I couldn't help but take so many photos.
We went on a scary( for me) tour of the property, up hills and down hills, through gullies and over rocky knobs....for me  it was terrifying, but everyone else had the time of their lives ,even the two perched up on back on the two chairs.
We saw kangaroos,  and also some deer as we  drove around the property which was about 5,000 acres in total.
After a wonderful camp fire and a great  nibbles/dinner and wonderful conversation  we all hit the sack.
Next morning the sunrise was glorious and it reflected off the lake beautifully, I only managed to get a couple of shots which in no way did it justice.
A kangaroo mum and her joey came down to drink along side the ducks.
This was such a beautiful spot, we could have stayed there for ages, but unfortunately we all had to move on. Hopefully  there will be future times that we may be able to return  to this place again.
This was the point we went our separate ways,  we went on to Noosa and the others attended a bench rest shooting  competition at Springsure.
We headed to Noosa, to catch up with another Aunt of Brian's who we hadn't visited for many years. She suffers terribly from arthritis and is beginning to have mobility issues.
It was lovely to catch up and we had a  nice morning tea with her. She is very interested in family history and has compiled a wonderful book of Brian's family  history.
Early next morning while we were outside the caravan having our coffee we were inundated with ducks demanding food,
We probably made a big mistake feeding them as very soon after I think we had half the feathered population of Noosa  wanting to share  what the ducks were having.
My favourites were the beautiful rainbow lorrikeets.

 We are not  really coast loving  people and although we had planned to go back down the coast we decided to head back inland instead .
We went through Gympie, Kingaroy and Dalby, staying the night in Dalby.
We  wandered through  a great pioneer museum  in Dalby that engaged us for a couple of hours.
I especially loved the  original old cottage that had been relocated to the museum and spent ages in the kitchen ,looking at all the old kitchen paraphernalia .
We had arranged to meet up again with the BIL & SIL from next door back in Moree at the hot thermal pools.
We loved our trip  to them  before and were looking forward to a return visit.
We spent a couple of days there before they arrived, then we enjoyed three days together.
My Sister In Law Kerry celebrated her 60th  birthday while we were there and we enjoyed a lovely dinner out together while we were there and Kerry and I also enjoyed a days shopping.
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Moree and  while there also  ran into some other people from  our local town which was  fun.
We headed back home  and the BIL & SIL stayed on  there for another couple of days.
Our time was up and we really had to return to the farm.
There had been no rain while we were away and things were pretty grim.
It was a lovely break and we hope to do many more trips like this in the future.
We had  great company and  had some wonderful times over the three weeks, but  we were glad to come home.
I will  try and do a few updates over the next couple of days while I have a chance.
Until we meet up again,
Take care everyone,
Cheers
Jane and Brian.

2 comments:

  1. what an awesome trip, ooo & loved the kitchen in the little cottage too!
    you would've gone through my home town when you went from Gympie to Kingaroy as well.
    some awesome photos of your trip, such pretty places
    glad all the trip went smoothly & you had a wonderful time catching up with family & friends
    thanx for sharing

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Selina,
      We really did have a wonderful time and are already looking forward to the next excursion(probably after summer,as I don't caravan too well in the heat)
      There were some lovely little towns that we encountered along the way, all with obviously hard working community minded people doing wonderful work supporting their town.
      I had never been up around the Gympie,Kingaroy,Dalby area, so it was good to see that area.
      Take care
      Cheers.

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